


Point the clicker at the tube/I prefer expensive news

by pillar_of_salt



Series: Hunger Games Prompts [3]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, Newsroom AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 06:22:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13070955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pillar_of_salt/pseuds/pillar_of_salt
Summary: “There is nothing more important to democracy than a well-informed electorate.” -Mackenzie McHale, The Newsroom





	Point the clicker at the tube/I prefer expensive news

**Author's Note:**

> So my #1 weakness forever is Hunger Games AUs set in post-rebellion Panem. This is an homage to Aaron Sorkin's hilarious, overly earnest, sometimes problematic The Newsroom. If you haven't seen it, GO WATCH THIS CLIP RIGHT NOW AND GO DOWN A YOUTUBE SPIRAL LIKE I DID WHEN I FIRST SAW IT.
> 
> RIGHT NOW.
> 
>  
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zqOYBabXmA

Madge threw up her hands. “I can’t help you anymore.”

 

“I don’t recall asking for it,” Peeta said, leaning back in his chair.

 

“Well maybe you should have. Ifyou’d let me prep you for the interview -“

 

“I’ve been a newsman for seven years, I don’t need to be prepped for -“

 

“- _a bad reaction to vertigo meds_?”

 

“I was also strung up on some pretty strong histamines.”

 

“PR couldn’t even be bothered to come up with a halfway convincing lie,” Madge declared fatalistically, turning away and resuming work on the trench she’d been pacing into Peeta’s office’s carpet for the past half hour. “Have you talked to Haymitch at all?”

 

“Getting a drink with him at the Pool at 3pm.”

 

Madge covered her face. “You’re fired, you’re so fired. Why didn’t you tell me earlier? I need to go beg for a job from my friends at CBN and DNN now.”

 

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re going to be stuck at MBC until the day you die.”

 

“Which will be soon, when they _fire_ you and me, and I can’t find a job in this economy and end up killed by mugger because I’m sleeping in the dumpster behind the building!”

 

“It could be worse.”

 

“It could? Enlighten me.”

 

Peeta eyed the still-untouched sweet cheese croissant one of the less hopeless interns had left on his desk this morning. Right before one of the more hopeless interns ratted his presence out to Madge and she flew in with the - fine - well-deserved fury of a thousand suns. “They could demote you to producing reality television,” he offered. “Or a morning show on how to make sandwiches.”

 

“Excuse me,” Beetee interrupted, poking his head into Peeta’s office. “Madge, Wiress and I really need you to review the script on the hacking of the Oceania district rep’s personal laptop.”

 

“Allegations of hacking,” Madge said reflexively.

 

“Right.” Beetee swiveled to look at Peeta, pushing his glasses further up his nose. “So uh. Any word from-“

 

“He’s going to be fired,” Madge answered.

 

“You know,” Peeta said, “I have working vocal cords. And a brain. The vertigo meds didn’t damage any of that.”

 

Madge smiled sweetly. “You should really get a second opinion from a doctor.”

 

“I’m just gonna…go,” Beetee said, beating a strategic retreat.

 

*

 

“So the good news is, you’re not being fired,” Haymitch said. 

 

At 3pm on a Wednesday, The Pool was mostly populated by tourists fresh off the bullet trains from the Capitol: businessmen and women in sharp, sensible suits cozied up to the mother-of-pearl bar, admiring the understated elegance of its antique mirrors, the satiny cherry wood of the liquor cabinets, the deep, shimmering blue pool in the center of the room. His reputation in all respects preceding him, Haymitch had them installed in a private window booth made of glass for others to gawk at but not listen in on.

 

“Okay,” Peeta said, stirring his watermelon cocktail. “Am I being suspended without pay then?”

 

“Nope. You’re gonna do your show tonight, plus all the rest promised under your current contract.”

 

Peeta frowned. “Madge isn’t being being fired either, right? The thing at Syracuse University wasn’t her fault.”

 

Haymitch rolled his eyes and popped a ribbon of foie gras into his mouth. After a moment of chewing slowly, he said, “Not anymore. I told Alma and Plutarch that it would be counterproductive. Alma was the one who needed convincing.”

 

Peeta felt himself shrink a little. “Shit,” he sighed, “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

 

“What did you expect?” Haymitch asked, incredulous. “You had a viral meltdown at a packed college speaker panel, insulted prominent broadcasters from both of our major rival networks, and then sermonized about how the ideals of the Reformation had been totally lost under a return to bread and circuses. You were out of control. Alma wanted to send you a message to watch your step.”

 

“She should have just fired me,” Peeta said into his straw.

 

“No she shouldn’t have,” Haymitch said. “Because I agree with you.”

 

Peeta looked up.

 

Haymitch leaned forward, and in the blinding sunlight slanting through the waterfall window treatments of the Pool, years of dubious career “mentorship” exacerbated by a liquor problem seemed to fall away, revealing a sharp-eyed man fractionally more like the war hero who’d helped set the old Panem on fire and burn its twisted roots to the ground. 

 

“I agree with you,” Haymitch repeated, “because I don’t think Panem is the greatest country in the world. People on both sides of the political spectrum have refused to take ownership of the past and would rather cut off an arm than shake the hand of the guy across the aisle. When it bothers to cover the important issues, the media is either unequipped to speak intelligently, tries to egg extremists on, or twists itself up in false equivalencies - which, if I were you, I would’ve knocked the moderator for comparing me to Caesar Flickerman.” He takes a long pull of the bottom-shelf moonshine the Pool probably stocks exclusively for him. “We’ve gotten comfortable. We have an audience of a hundred million people every day and night, and whatever we’re giving them, it’s not fearless or incisive or real.”

 

“You know I agree with everything you’re saying,” Peeta said, snapping an orange chip from the complimentary dish in half. “I’ve been agreeing for years.”  


“Not before you got famous by not bothering anybody. You used to be less like me.”

 

“Is there a point to this?” Peeta sighed. “I just wanted to know if anyone needed to start looking for a new job.”

 

“I’ve hired a new EP for you,” Haymitch said.

 

Everything screeched to a halt.

 

“I thought - Madge?”

 

Haymitch waved his concerns away with a bottle. “She’ll be EP for the new 10 o’clock, have the chance to build something up instead of shepherding your big ego around all the time.”

 

“I am _nice._ ” Peeta tipped 15% for lunch and 20% for dinner. He donated to charity. He remembered (most of) his employees’ birthdays. “I am a nice person”

 

“You mean all the focus groups like you.”

 

Peeta refused to pinch the bridge of his nose and feel like a middle-aged dad. “Okay, so I was told by the company in no uncertain terms to go off the grid for two weeks after Syracuse, and in the meantime you just. Hired a new EP for me? Without even having me meet them?”

 

“Oh, you’ve met her.”

 

“So it’s a woman,” Peeta latched on to, and then paused. A cold pulse traveled down his spine. “No.”

 

Haymitch played with his lemon wedge.

 

“You can’t pick her.”

 

“Oh I’m sorry,” Haymitch said mildly. “Do you sign my paychecks? Do you get to tell me what to do?”

 

Peeta covered his face. “You’re not talking about…Katniss Everdeen.”

 

Haymitch leaned forward, speaking quick and low, voice raked over with aged scotch and rotgut and bewilderingly earnest. “Alma wasn’t wrong. You’re a liability right now, your focus groups don’t think you’re such a nice person anymore, but you’re also too big an asset to let get damaged. I needed to make sure you fix your image.”

 

Peeta stabbed at him accusingly with his now-twisted straw. “And you didn’t think this was the worst possible way of getting to do that?”

 

“She was in Afghanistan for two years,” Haymitch continued, relentless. “Moves on to Kashmir for six months, where she wins a Peabody for reporting on the trafficking of child refugees while getting shot at in a food truck in the midst of a civil war. Then the insurgents retaliate by firebombing her apartment, and she wakes up in the Capitol barely able to speak and covered in skin grafts. DNN and CBN aren’t sure whether she’s worth keeping around; you’re telling me that there’s nothing for her here in New Athens? Katniss Everdeen, the girl on fire?”

 

“Haymitch,” Peeta started

 

“She wants to be an EP again. She’s exhausted.”

 

“I don’t blame her.”

 

“Not exhausted like at the end of a long day. She hasn’t slept more than four hours a night for years. Couldn’t talk for ages even when she could move around again. What happened in Kashmir made a molotov cocktail of her physical and mental state.”

 

Peeta didn’t know that. He looked away. “It doesn’t sound like wrangling a group of 50 reporters every night is going to help with that.” 

 

“Well, luckily I’m the one making the decision.”

 

“My contract gives me final approval over all new hires.”

 

Haymitch cackled. “You would think that, wouldn’t you.”

 

Peeta pushed away his drink. “It doesn’t?”

 

“You’ll find that Business Affairs and your agent have already discussed this in detail. The deal is as good as signed. She’s probably getting her badge from security right now; you can see her as soon as you go back to work.”

 

Peeta has always had a pretty long fuse. It served him well for many years with his mother, it got him connections throughout college and law school and as a speechwriter for President Paylor. It landed him in the anchor’s chair of News Night at 30. “Fuck that,” he said, pushing back from the table and turning around to flag a waiter. “I’m going down to Corbin Castor and renegotiating my contract right now.”

 

“It’s not going to go your way,” Haymitch said. Beyond the glass, some of the bar patrons had started looking over at them in blatant curiousity.

 

“I bring in an annual profit of 210 million credits on my own,” Peeta snapped, “Not counting the lead-in I do for the 8 and 10 o’clock slots, plus any speaking or guest appearances I do on behalf of this company. That might be chump change for you and Coin and Heavensbee, but it still counts for something.” He started get up. Haymitch reached across the minimalist square table and _pushed him back into his seat._

 

_“_ When was the last time you saw her?” he asked, low and dangerous, like he always did when he wanted to remind people: fuck you, I’m Haymitch Abernathy, I killed 3 people and won a broadcasted gladiatorial fight to the death at 16, and I overthrew a government by the time I was 20.

 

Peeta swallowed. “I don’t know. Three years ago?”

 

“Coincidentally, that’s the last time you were _actually_ a nice person.” Haymitch sat back in his chair and glared away the curious gaggle of tourists inching closer to their booth before turning back to Peeta and smiling, all teeth. “You can go now. Drinks are on me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Why does God let underdeveloped female characters happen to otherwise excellent TV shows.


End file.
